The blast hole where the Hassan house in Gaza was bombed by Israeli warplanes, photo by Dan Cohen



Israeli F-16 strikes destroyed a house in the Mughraga area of Gaza overnight, killing five-months-pregnant Nour Hassan, 27, her two-year-old daughter Rahaf, and injuring her husband Yahya and their toddler son. All that remains of the house is a massive blast hole several meters deep and twenty meters wide amid scattered bits of clothing and personal belongings.

“No one called and told us to evacuate the house,” said 17-year-old Abdullah Hassan, Yahya’s cousin who was nearby when the missiles struck. “It was a cheap shot.”

As soon as the missiles struck, Abdullah Hassan and his cousin sprinted to the site. They heard crying and found the little boy dozens of meters away – he had been blown afar by the explosion. After rescuing the boy, they heard the father’s voice. The two cousins began a heroic effort to rescue Yahya Hassan who was trapped under a large piece of concrete and was impaled by a piece of rebar. The boys continued to dig through the rubble until they found the lifeless bodies of Nour and Rafah Hassan.

Situated approximately 300 meters from the Badr training site of Al-Qassam, Gaza’s largest armed resistance group, the house was shabbily built, like many of its kind.

Early this afternoon, mourners gathered at a neighborhood mosque. The distraught and injured father sat in a wheelchair next to his dead wife and daughter, tearing up as he kissed the little girl’s lacerated, bare face and gripped her tiny hands.

Yahya Hassan prays in a Gaza mosque before the funeral for his pregnant wife and child, photo by Dan Cohen

Yahya Hassan with the body of his daughter Rahaf, 2, photo by Dan Cohen

Mourners carried the body of Rahaf Hassan outside, raising her body overhead, reciting verses and calling for armed resistance. Gunfire rang out as the funeral proceeded.

Family members lined the streets outside, angry and distraught after another Israeli attack on a Palestinian family.

In Gaza today, mourners carry the body of Rahaf Hassan and call for armed resistance, photo by Dan Cohen

“I hope God breaks Israel,” Ijdia Hassan, Yahya’s mother, shouted through tears as she held the surviving boy’s hand. “What is the fault of the little baby who is crying for his mother? God burn them the way they burned this child’s heart!”

A Gaza woman comforts the surviving boy of the Hassan family, photo by Dan Cohen

“We should have a third, fourth and fifth intifada,” said 65-year-old Amna Zahar, Yahya Hassan’s cousin. “We should have a third, fourth and fifth intifada. Whatever it takes to keep fighting. They have no conscience, they have no mercy. They are dead inside!”

“All of the Gazan women are fighters! Just bring us weapons and we’ll take the fight them,” another elderly woman shouted. “If they were to meet us face to face, they’d see the kind of fight they would get.”

The bombing came hours after three rockets were launched from northern Gaza, none of which caused any damage. No group claimed responsibility for the rockets, and Al-Qassam security forces combed the streets looking for the perpetrators.

Abdullah Hassan combs through belongings where the house was bombed, in Gaza, photo by Dan Cohen

Since the ceasefire that ended Israel’s 51-day mega-assault on Gaza last year, Hamas has abided by the terms while Israel has violated the agreement on a near-daily basis. When rogue factions have launched rockets, Israel has held Hamas responsible, bombing evacuated Al-Qassam training sites.

Israeli soldiers killed eleven and injured at least 145 Palestinian youth including three children along the border over the previous days. University students called for protests at the Nahal Oz crossing.

Blowback continues in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and inside Israel as government forces continue to increase repression.

English class homework found in a small backpack amid the rubble of Hassan home, Gaza, photo by Dan Cohen

About Dan Cohen

Dan Cohen is an independent journalist and filmmaker based in Palestine. He tweets at @dancohen3000.

The grandmother: ““I hope God breaks Israel,” Ijdia Hassan, Yahya’s mother, shouted through tears as she held the surviving boy’s hand. “What is the fault of the little baby who is crying for his mother? God burn them the way they burned this child’s heart!”

We’ll be seeing another round of discussions in the MSM about why Muslims are becoming “radicalized”. There will be NO mention of them being victimized, brutalized, pulverized, murdered, bombed, and shot while having their homes and lands brazenly stolen.

People who are deeply wounded says things they know deep down are unrealistic or they don’t want to have to do. Israel has the Goliath arsenal; Palestinians have sticks and stones and not much else. Israel will take the most rudimentary resistance and use it to launch the most disproportionate, barbaric punishment.

Palestinians know that Israel is looking for any excuse to decimate them and justify it to the world as self-defence and get away with it, when this is but a sadistic joke as Palestinians have no arms of consequence to meet such monstrous power as Israel can unleash.

No one is helping the Palestinians with their legitimate cause for freedom and the return of their land. The U.N. under that idiot Banky is a useless parrot. And the community in whose name these murders are being committed and who have the ultimate power, the most significant power to do something about this are filled only with apathy, self-righteousness and complete self-indulgence. They can only find a hundred excuses why this is a necessary evil and ensure this narrative persists while Palestinians continue to be battered and incapacitate everyone else from helping in a significant way.

So is this being done in the name of Zionism alone? No, it’s called the Jewish state for a reason, and anyone of the Jewish faith from the U.S. to Moldova to Timbuktu can go there and continue to steal land from Palestinians until the latter disappear.

It’s immoral, inhumane, totally depraved and in one word that says it all…EVIL.

Just to give you some idea of the cruelty of Israeli public, I heard a well-known, well-respected reporter on CNN state that 73% of Israelis are dissatisfied with Netanyahu’s response complaining that the response is to sofffffft!

Even if you ignored the impact hole on the picture, destroyed by a rocket blast is destroyed by a rocket blast, these people have been intentionally murdered by illegal, armed, genocidal intervention by colonial murderers and you are one of them.

“I doubt that the Hassan’s house wasn’t directly hit by an Israeli missile.”

You don’t even read what you write, do you? You “doubt the house wasn’t directly hit”
Gee, so do I.
I’ve seen that before from Xiobots, your fingers have more sense than your head. Or at least some sense of decency.

“Ok, lets say you’re right, the bomb hit and the house collapsed collaterally. So what? ”

My point is not to parse out the evil, my point is that, once again, Dan’s Cohen’s journalistic bona fides are found to be lacking.

He’s the man on the scene, with the camera, yet he can’t determine whether the victims died when their house collapsed, or whether they died when a missile struck their home.

Dan. We know that there was a Badr training site 300 meters from the blast site, but was there also a weapons manufacturing site located even closer to the victim’s home?
It’s a question a real journalist would ask, since the IDF is claiming that they attacked a weapons manufacturing site.

Yep…..Jackdaw can jibber twaddle as much as he likes but there is nothing at all heroic or honourable about using an F-16 JET bristling with high tech weaponry to take out an unarmed,defenceless family…….it is worthy of one description only……COWARDICE.

@Jkdw: “It’s a question a real journalist would ask, since the IDF is claiming that they attacked a weapons manufacturing site.”

You seem to be saying that if there was a “weapons manufacturing site” nearby, then Israel was justified in attacking, even though the Palestinian woman, her unborn baby, and her daughter were killed.

So if the Palestinians manage to blow up some “weapons manufacturing sites” in Israel and kill some Jewish women and children in the process, it will be no big deal, right? I guess the law of proportionality would mean that blowing up lots of weapons sites in Israel, and lots of Jewish families, would be appropriate, since Israel has lots of weapon sites?

If the Palestinians attacked a legitimate military target and collaterally killed some Jewish women and children, no it would not be a big deal to me. “Jackdaw”

There is the true spirit of Zionist self-sacrifice which has helped Zionists prevail for so many years! A true Zionist heeds not the cost, he is always willing to see some other Jews get killed. Now that’s what I call Tribal Unity! (And if they are Reform, or secular, than so much the better!)

Clearly using something with a massive amount of destructive capability and simply not caring about “collateral” doesn’t let them off the hook or make them any better then if they actually had fired the missile directly into the house itself.

Callous indifference when it comes to general Palestinian life as opposed to a premediated and specific strike. Great job, you don’t “win” anything and your precious IAF pilots aren’t absolved of anything.

This unique ability of people here to be so exact when something serves their case and disregard completely an absolutely clear case that don`t is no less than amazing.
It seems that nobody here read that in the very same day a guy from Um El Fahm run with his car into several people and after wounding them also got down from the car and shot them from close distance. This got everybody shocked here and in his case there are no ambiguities whatsoever.

Hi Irvi, You wrote ” It seems that nobody here read that in the very same day a guy from Um El Fahm run with his car into several people and after wounding them also got down from the car and shot them from close distance. ”

I suspect you’re thinking of a recent incident where a young Palestinian Israeli drove his car into a female soldier, then got out & stabbed her & another soldier, plus 2 civilians. No shooting occurred, from “close” or any other distance. That perpetrator was apprehended & will be severely punished for his attack. The Israelis, however, will get away with theirs. Also, unlike the pregnant girl & her 2 year old daughter in Dan’s article, none of the victims in Um El Fahm were killed. There was no loss of life. Another major difference is that his article refers to the actions of a state, the Israeli government, ‘democratically’ representing the Israeli populace, but the incident you brought up is the act of a lone individual, representing no one but himself.

I’m one of those people who happen to believe that the cover-up is as bad or sometimes worse than the crime and you’re sure doing a whole lot of covering up for the crimes of your Zionist comrades but no doubt you’re only a vehicle for their deception.

Jackdaw, ” A major difference is that Palestinian driver deliberately set out to murder unarmed civilians, while the IDF unintentionally caused collateral damage and death.”

Au contraire! The 20 year old Pal’s 1st & 2nd targets were uniformed IDF soldiers. The 2 civilians (who, like the soldiers, are still very much alive) were only “collateral damage”. When they tried to intervene, he tried to defend himself. And as I mentioned, he is in custody & unlike Israel, will be punished for his actions.

” Anyone here see the difference?”

Of course the real major difference is that one side is the occupier, the other the occupied, for 48 years now, & counting. The occupier steals their land, water, & other natural resources, regularly kills their women & children, tortures them, imprisons them, & humiliates them on a daily basis. What exactly do you expect?

Jackdaw, The next ‘major difference’, is that the Israelis have been given state of the art weaponry by the US, France, & others. Subsequently, they have a powerful army, navy, & air force, with fighter planes, attack drones, Blackhawk helicopters, battleships, submarines, 3-ton bombs, satellite surveillance, phosphorous bombs, tear gas, skunk trucks, armored tanks, an iron dome, stun grenades, cluster bombs, hundreds of nuclear weapons (aka Weapons of Mass Destruction), etc., etc. But the Palestinians have none of that stuff. It’s most certainly not a fair fight.

@Jackdaw
“A major difference is that Palestinian driver deliberately set out to murder unarmed civilians,while the IDF unintentionally caused collateral damage and death”. Yeah just like the Nazis during the London blitz.

“They have no conscience, they have no mercy, They are dead inside” Israel keeps proving this over and over again. They have yet to be held accountable for crimes against humanity. That goes for the U.S. too.

There is no International formula for calculating the worth of a military target against collateral damage.

Civilians are factored in. High tech, pinpoint accurate (until the explosion) human slaughtering equipment is then deliberately fired in the knowledge that the factored in civilians are going to be victims

“Much of our current discussion regarding the protests in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and as of late at the Gaza border is centred on Israeli priorities, not Palestinian rights, which is clearly prejudiced. Once more, Israel is speaking of ‘unrest’ and ‘attacks’ originating from the ‘territories’, as if the priority is guaranteeing the safety of the armed occupiers – soldiers and extremist settlers, alike.

“Rationally, it follows that the opposite state of ‘unrest’, that of ‘quiet’ and ‘lull’, are when millions of Palestinians agree to being subdued, humiliated, occupied, besieged and habitually killed or, in some cases, lynched by Israeli Jewish mobs or burned alive, while embracing their miserable fate and carrying on with life as usual.

“The return to ‘normalcy’ is thus achieved; obviously, at the high price of blood and violence, which Israel has a monopoly on, while its actions are rarely questioned, Palestinians can then assume the role of the perpetual victim, and their Israeli masters can continue manning military checkpoints, robbing land and building yet more illegal settlements in violation of international law.”

What sad pictures. We have seen so many Palestinian kids killed in such brutal ways, and yet no one gives a damn. I also remember the little boys being blown up while playing soccer by war criminals.

There is no hope for the Palestinians, there is no credible leader that will be strong enough and push the rest of the world to stop the massacre, the land grabs, the occupation.

Meanwhile in zio land, their loony leader is still unable to take responsibility for the carnage going on, and admit he could do things better to stop this madness.
You’ve got to change your evil ways, Bibi.

The Huffington Post started “cleansing” its reporting about Israel when AOL took over. Sharmine Narwani describes how her blogs started being rejected after AOL took over. Eventually that included also scrubbing her past posts. This is like the Soviet Politburo deleting people from historical photographs!

I came across this after discovering an analysis by Sharmine Narwani had been deleted at HuffPost. That analysis showed how Israel repeatedly provoked conflict with the Palestinians when things had calmed down, and thoughts were turning toward peace talks.

Support Mondoweiss’s independent journalism today

Mondoweiss brings you the news that no one else will. Your tax-deductible donation enables us to deliver information, analysis and voices stifled elsewhere. Please give now to maintain and grow this unique resource.